Imagine having a medical condition where it’s really important that you don’t miss your weekly medical appointments. What would you do if your supervisor at work wouldn’t work with you on your schedule so that you could go to the medical appointments? Would you cancel the appointments or quit your job?

The employee in this story faced this exact decision, and he was not about to cancel any more medical appointments.

Let’s see how the drama unfolds.

Company wouldn’t honor the agreed upon days off when hiring me(with medical documentation). I quit and cost them their quarterly bonuses and a $350k contract.

I’ve spent the last few years working in fabrication, running some very specialized machines(industrial laser cutters for sheet metal). I’m very good at my job, and have worked my way up to a fairy good hourly wage.

I started working for this new employer in the fall last year. They specialize in HVAC ducting with an insanely quick turnaround time, and when I applied with my previous experience they were excited to have me.

For background, I have a medical condition that requires weekly appointments and followups. I got into a treatment program I fought for months to get into and it has been a lifesaver for me.

The employer was okay with working around OP’s medical appointments.

I was 100% up front about this with my new employer, stating that I absolutely needed Fridays off for medical appointments, but they could run me ragged through the week as long as I got that day off consistently.

I provided documentation from my doctor backing this up.

They agreed, and I worked an evening shift starting Sunday and ending Thursday morning, anywhere from 50-55 hours a week.

This company had a REALLY high turnover rate.

This worked fine for a few months until the company started an expansion in its business and started taking on way more than they were able to comfortably accommodate.

They were hiring people for my shift left and right, but could never seem to retain anyone after two months or so because the work/life balance was non-existent.

I remember one welder, a good hard worker, coming up to me as he was quitting because in his words “I’ve seen my kids a total of fifteen minutes in the last two weeks.”

At the six month mark of my tenure there, I was the most senior employee on my shift except the supervisor. The turnover rate was so high there was no point to put in the effort to learn someone’s name before they were gone.

There weren’t many people who knew how to do OP’s job.

Throughout all this expansion, they never hired another laser operator.

The machine was essentially running 24/7 between myself and two other people, and it was the most important machine in our workflow because nothing else got done unless those parts were cut out.

At the beginning of the year, they wanted to move me to a traditional Monday-Friday shift, 7am to 7pm.

I refused because I wouldn’t be able to continue with my medical program, nor get anything else done during the week.

Uh-oh!

Around the middle of spring, they got backed up because one of the machines went down. I was asked if I could make an exception to my day off and come in on Friday, pretty pretty please.

Me, being an idiot, I agreed to it and cancelled my appointment that week, thinking it would be a one-off because the machine was only down for a day.

Stuff legitimately happens.

Once I made an exception the first time, you can see where this is going.

It wasn’t a one off.

A few weeks later they asked me to do it again – not because the machine went down, but because they had just overextended themselves on a really expensive contract with a very big company.

I objected, stating my medical exemption, and they pulled someone else in to work the shift.

This happened a few times, and I did end up rearranging a few appointments because, again, I was an idiot.

This is a big problem.

Things came to a head at the end of spring.

The shift as a whole had a meeting that week and decided they wanted to put it to a vote to take that Sunday off and work on Friday instead for the week.

I was outvoted, wanting to work the original shift, and it was suddenly decided that everyone would be coming in Friday.

The next day (a Monday) I go in and talk to HR and make them aware that this is a recurring issue; the HR manager says he’ll handle it and get back to me the next day.

OP cannot work any more Fridays.

I talk to my doctor and let him know there’s a chance I’ll need to reschedule again; I get a phone call from the medical office stating that I’ve ended up rescheduling or cancelling a lot in the past few months and if it kept happening, I was at risk of getting dropped from the program.

I cannot and will not allow that to happen.

I go in the next day and talk to HR, letting them know that I was promised this wasn’t going to be an issue. I reminded them they agreed to my scheduling and I had provided them documentation that I could not work on Fridays.

HR calls in my supervisor.

I feel bad for the supervisor’s wife.

For context, my supervisor was one of those people who don’t really see value in anything but work.

He got married last year, and he took no time off for his wedding – he worked a full shift on Friday, got married Saturday, and was back at work on Sunday morning.

He expects everyone underneath him to adhere to this insanity disguised as work ethic and is one of the reasons our turnover was so high.

He tried to compromise.

What follows is a heated argument about how he needs me to work that shift and he won’t even try to call in someone else.

I tell them I’ll come in on Saturday; that won’t work.

I tell them I’ll do four 14 hour shifts that week to make up the production, as this company has absolutely no qualms with handing out overtime to anyone who wants it.

That won’t work either.

Time to look for a new job.

Supervisor stands firm.

HR looks at me and shrugs, telling me there’s nothing he can do.

I’m mad at this point and go to work my shift, updating my resume and seeing what other jobs are available in my field, and there’s a lot.

The plan was to get a new job and turn in notice, but then the supervisor comes up to me and tries to be buddy buddy. He starts a long winded yarn about how sometimes we have to sacrifice for work, and that there are things expected of us as adults in a functioning society, and then tells me “You need to make a decision.”

This isn’t going to play out the way the supervisor imagines.

I have heard that phrase a handful of times in my life, and nobody who ever says it to me does so out of concern – it’s always a “you need to decide to do what I’m telling you to do of your own free will.”

I grunt and say “Yeah, I guess I do.”

Jerk then slaps me on the back, smiles, and says “Great! See you Friday.”

That was the breaking point for me.

He never went back.

I did work the rest of my shift, but at the end of the night I drafted up a resignation letter effective immediately, left it on HR’s desk, and walked out. Went home, put my phone on silent, and slept like the dead.

I’m almost 40 and that’s the first time in my life I’ve ever quit a job on the spot.

I had four missed calls from my company the next morning – two from HR, one from the boss of the company, and one from my now ex-supervisor.

Never returned them.

It worked out well for him.

I did end up getting a new job at a company that respects my hours and has a much better work/life balance, and a raise in my salary to boot.

Six weeks had gone by, and I stopped in at the gas station that all of us would go to on break to grab a drink. I ran into one of the only coworkers that I liked, and he told me what happened.

It wasn’t good.

When I quit, they didn’t have anyone else on my shift who knew how to run and operate the machine. They started leaning on the other two people, causing one of them to quit, and on top of that half a dozen welders and other fabricators quit as well in a domino effect.

The entire production completely backed up because of this, and that big client that I mentioned earlier? They’re named after a particular rainforest in South America and were building a bunch of new distribution centers in the area – our company landed the contract to do their HVAC work on several, with a possibility of extending it outward to more depending on how the initial partnership went…and it went poorly.

They missed the target date for the production run and the penalties for doing so ate up any profit they were going to get from the job that they underbid, along with causing Rainforest Company to cancel the contract after the initial work.

Nobody got bonuses that quarter…causing even more people to quit.

I’m surprised the company is still in business.

The company has several locations across the US – in one quarter they went from having the highest profit numbers to being dead last.

I can’t even imagine the anger that the C-suite execs threw at my old boss and HR supervisor over that happening.

Now, when I look at their company page on Indeed, they’re desperately looking for people but the salary ranges are down about 20% from when I applied when things were good.

All I wanted was for them to honor the one day off I needed and they agreed to.

I’m surprised HR couldn’t force the supervisor to honor the agreement.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This would be a good idea.

They obviously didn’t care about him.

This person shares their favorite part.

That is a long work day.

Yeah, that marriage isn’t going to last.

If you don’t care about your employees, don’t expect them to stay.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.